A township company has partnered with one of the nation's leading research institutions to develop marine technology used in record-setting dives in the Gulf of Mexico and cleanup after Hurricane Katrina. Monitor Instruments, which employs 10 scientists and sits along East Union Road, developed the Tethys undersea mass spectrometer in conjunction with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, which is renowned for its underwater research. The Tethys device is used for chemical analysis. One of its most notable applications is detecting hydrocarbons -- oil and various natural gases -- on the ocean floor. "In the oil industry, before drilling starts, this technology can pinpoint the areas where they should drill," said Tony Duryea, Monitor president and CEO. "This is a very large breakthrough for the oil industry." Duryea said the technology can pinpoint oil or gas leaks. From 150 to 200 oil platforms were blown over in Hurricane Katrina, he said, resulting in leaking well heads or pipelines. "They've had a difficult time pinpointing where some of these leaks are coming from," Duryea said. "On two platforms in particular, they spent from three to six months trying to find the leaks. With this device, they were able to zero in on them within an hour." Woods Hole researcher Richard Camilli said the work being done at Monitor is cutting-edge and already has had a profound impact on marine research. "They are top-notch scientists," Camilli said of the group at Monitor. "(Monitor) is a well-kept secret." The West Deer company developed what Camilli said "is the heart of the Tethys" -- the sensor portion of the device that detects compounds dissolved in water. That sensor is capable of detecting extremely minute traces of chemicals in water, down to parts per billion. "If you dissolved a small aspirin in an olympic-size swimming pool," he said, "this (sensor) could detect that substance." The Tethys is an extremely rugged device capable of traveling to great depths attached to underwater vehicles. Duryea said the Tethys made a record-setting dive in the Gulf of Mexico reaching about 3,000 feet and operating for several hours. The Tethys, Duryea said, has been engineered to explore dissolved hydrocarbon and atmospheric gases at depths of up to 5,000 meters. "This, from what I understand, has gone the deepest of any instrument of its type for this purpose," he said. Camilli said the technology has numerous other applications. He said the Tethys will be taken near the North Pole for a dive in the Arctic Ocean in an attempt to identify new life forms. Camilli also said the Tethys will be taken to Panama within a few weeks to study problems there associated with the effects of land use, particularly deforestation, on coastal reefs, among other planned research. Duryea said Monitor's technology has uses in other industries, such as the chemical and medical industries. The Tethys, Duryea said, was used off the coast of California to identify gases coming from the Pacific Ocean floor that have been polluting the Los Angeles area. The company opened in 1994 in West Deer and had been doing research and manufacturing for NASA, Duryea said. West Deer was chosen as a site largely because it was an unassuming location for Monitor, which partners with other companies in the Alle-Kiski Valley to manufacture its equipment, he said. "The reason we're here," Duryea said, "is because nobody pays attention to us."

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